Saturday, March 10, 2018

It’s hard to imagine now, but censorship was a cause celebre
in the 1960s and 70s.

The banning or restriction of movies, books and even records
was never far from the headlines. Post-war liberalism was colliding head-on with
traditional morality and the official censors were struggling to draw new
boundaries between what was acceptable and what wasn’t.

The film censor featured in the New Zealand media so often
in those days that he (it was always a “he”) became virtually a household name.
Between 1957 and 1973, cuts were made to 37 per cent of films because of sex,
violence or bad language.

Even without the film censor or Indecent Publications
Tribunal standing over them, some government agencies took it on themselves to
act as moral guardians – including the monopoly New Zealand Broadcasting
Corporation, which refused to play any record deemed subversive (for example,
the pacifist protest song Eve of
Destruction) or sexually suggestive (the Rolling Stones’ Let’s Spend the Night Together).

It was the era of the indomitable Patricia Bartlett,
secretary of the Society for the Promotion of Community Standards. The former
Catholic nun became the scourge of movie distributors and book publishers,
pouncing on smut – a word almost never heard these days – wherever it raised
its lubricious head.

Why am I recalling all this? Because in the censorship
battles of the 1960s and 70s, it was the liberal Left that led the push for
freedom to choose what people could see, read and hear.

Ultimately they won the battle against the moral
conservatives. But at some point in the intervening decades, something strange
began to happen.

The New Zealand Left executed a gradual 180-degree turn. Now
it’s the Left who are the self-appointed censors, mobilising to shut down any
ideas and opinions that offend them.

The old term “liberal Left” has become a contradiction,
because many of the strident voices on the Left are frighteningly illiberal –
not on questions of sexual morality, where anything is now permissible, but on
matters of politics, culture and ideology. Their antennae twitch constantly,
acutely alert for imagined evidence of racism, misogyny and homophobia.

This is especially true of the social media generation, who
block their ears, drum their feet on the floor and hum loudly to block out any
idea or opinion that upsets them.

This is a generation of New Zealanders who never experienced
a sharp smack when they misbehaved, were driven to school every day by
over-indulgent parents and were taught by teachers and university lecturers who
lean so far to the left that many need corrective spinal surgery.

The threat to freedom of speech and opinion no longer comes
from bossy government agencies (although the Human Rights Commission makes a
sterling effort to deter people from saying or thinking anything it disapproves
of) but from platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, where digital lynch mobs
indulge in snarling, hissing gang-ups against anyone who challenges leftist
orthodoxy.

An example was the hysterical outcry against Sir Bob Jones
over a column written by him for the National
Business Review, in which he suggested that Waitangi Day should be renamed
Maori Gratitude Day and marked by Maori doing nice things for Pakeha, such as
bringing them breakfast in bed and weeding their gardens.

It was obviously satirical – a classic piece of Jones
mischief – but humour is lost on the prigs and bigots of the new Left. Someone
launched a petition to have Jones stripped of his knighthood and NBR, to its shame, removed the column
from its website, using the weasel-word justification that the column was
“inappropriate”.

Public discourse has reached the point where almost any
mildly right-of-centre opinion is liable to bring forth frenzied denunciations
and calls for the offender to be silenced, fired or boycotted. The silly,
melodramatic term “hate speech” has come to mean anything that upsets someone.

New Zealand has so far largely been spared the extremes of
intolerance shown on overseas university campuses, where violent protests force
the abandonment of lectures by anyone the Left doesn’t like.

Could it happen here? Of course it could. Only last year,
University of Auckland students tried to exclude a pro-life group from campus
activities, Yet 50 years ago, New Zealand student newspapers were at the
cutting edge of demands for free speech.

I wonder what the old-school liberal Left make of all this.
It took generations for New Zealand to mature into a tolerant, liberal
democracy and now it sometimes looks as if we’ve not only slammed on the
brakes, but engaged reverse gear.

Thursday, March 8, 2018

Truth can be
elusive. Consider the recent furore over the Polish government’s introduction
of a law that, according to some critics, will greatly restrict public
discussion of Poland’s involvement in the Holocaust during World War Two.

The new law
prohibits mention of “Polish death camps” – on the face of it, an interference
in the right of free speech. Yet it’s hard not to feel sympathy for Poland’s
lawmakers.

Auschwitz
(or Oswiecim, as it’s properly known in Polish) and other notorious
extermination camps – Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek – may have been sited on
Polish soil, but they were not put there by Poles.

They were
built and administered by Nazi Germany, which preferred to conduct its
programme of genocide outside its own borders. Perhaps that was the Nazis’ way
of pretending their hands were clean.

I have been
to Auschwitz, but even standing on the site of the gas chambers, it’s
impossible to grasp the enormity of what happened there.

The Germans
alone were culpable, but the commonly used phrase “Polish death camps” carried
the implication that Poland was somehow responsible for these abominations. And
as the generations who remember World War Two gradually die out, there was a
risk that people who don’t know any better might be misled into thinking that
Poland as a nation was complicit in the Holocaust.

Seen in this
context, who could object if the Polish government wanted to prohibit usage of
the term? Yet Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu strenuously denounced
the law change and even implied that Poland was guilty of Holocaust denial.

Really?
Weren’t the Poles entitled to protect their national reputation?

My
95-year-old Polish mother-in-law, who remembers the war only too well, was
seriously indignant at Netanyahu’s objections, as I imagine most New Zealand
Poles would have been. She interpreted his statements as suggesting that the
Poles collectively bore some responsibility for the Nazi death camps, which
would have been a grievous slur on Polish honour.

But this is
where it gets complicated. Some Israeli critics argue that the Polish law
change threatens to stifle debate about Poles who killed Jews during the war.

As is so
often the case, the truth lies somewhere between extremes. Polish people were
neither fully complicit in the Holocaust, nor wholly innocent.

There were
documented cases of Poles, police included, playing an active role. As in some
other eastern European countries, a degree of anti-Semitism was rooted in
Polish culture.

Against
that, as my mother-in-law would point out, there were many well-documented
cases of Poles risking their lives to save Jews from the Nazis. The Polish
nurse Irena Sendler was credited with smuggling 2500 Jewish children out of the
Warsaw Ghetto and thereby saving them from the gas chambers – a feat of
extraordinary courage for which she was honoured in 1965 by the state of
Israel.

The Polish
underground organisation Zegota, of which Sendler was a member, operated secret
cells that supplied aid to an estimated 50,000 Polish Jews in hiding.

These
examples run counter to the narrative, promoted by some Jewish critics of the
recent law change, that portrayed Poland as complicit in the Holocaust.

An article
by Alex Ryvchin, director of public affairs at the Australian Council of
Australian Jewry, made the scurrilous claim that “Poles were often only too
happy to see the demise of their Jewish neighbours”. There you have it – an
entire country casually libelled in a few words.

As a public
relations strategy, the tendency of some Jewish activists to stridently allege
anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial everywhere they look seems doomed to produce
diminishing returns. It has become a kneejerk reaction to allege anti-Semitic
motives even where none exist. A possible consequence of this tendency to play the blame game is that people will take the phone off the hook.

Like the
Polish politicians who worry that ignorant people might interpret the phrase
“Polish death camps” literally, Jewish activists are concerned that generations
will grow up knowing nothing of the atrocities committed against Jews during
the war.

But in their
eagerness to remind us of the terrible things that happened to Jewry, they run
the risk that they will be seen as promoting a perception that only Jews are
allowed to be seen as victims of Nazism. And in their determination to portray
themselves as being at war with an implacably hostile world, they risk
alienating people who might otherwise be their friends.

No one can
deny that Jews were uniquely targeted for extermination, but others suffered
terribly too.

Poles, like
Jews, were considered an inferior race by the Nazis. Nearly six million Poles
died under German occupation. Many of those who survived, my parents-in-law
among them, were forcibly displaced and put to work in slave labour camps.

The truth,
as I said at the start of this column, can be elusive. The Polish death camps
were Nazi creations – that’s one truth. Some Poles collaborated in the
persecution of Jews – that’s another truth. These truths can co-exist without
cancelling each other out.

The
ultimate, incontrovertible truth is that war is brutally dehumanising; terrible
things happen.

Living in a country as small and intimate as New Zealand can
sometimes feel like being wrapped in a cuddly warm blanket. These occasions
arise whenever the nation is enveloped in a state of feel-goodism and
self-congratulation.

It happened when we won the America’s Cup and it happened
when Lorde swept the world pop charts. On such occasions it can seem
unpatriotic not to share the general mood of elation.

It happened too when the Labour government took a stand
against nuclear weapons in the 1980s and prime minister David Lange faced down
American critics in a celebrated Oxford Union debate. Even New Zealanders who
were uncomfortable with the government’s stance took pride in Lange’s famous
killer line (actually pinched from an Australian cartoon, according to Sir
Gerald Hensley) that he could smell the uranium on his opponent’s breath.

At times like this there can be a certain amount of subtle
pressure not to deviate from the national script, which demands that all New Zealanders’
hearts should swell with pride.

This phenomenon no doubt affects many countries, but it’s
magnified in our case because of our isolation and diminutive size. It’s plucky
little New Zealand standing up and demanding to be noticed. Whether the rest of
the world pays attention or not seems almost immaterial. We do it mainly for
our own sense of well-being.

Not falling into line with the national consensus on such
occasions is seen as letting the side down. Nothing must be allowed to dampen
the mood.

Right now feels like one of those times. If the media are to
be taken as an accurate barometer of the national psyche, the country has been
in a state of almost preternatural contentment since last year’s election.

Not only do we have a young, likeable, left-of-centre female
prime minister, but she’s going to have a baby while in office. Even hard-nosed
and normally sensible Wellington press gallery veterans almost swooned with
delirium at the announcement of Jacinda Ardern’s pregnancy. What could be more 21st
century than giving birth and then going back to work after six weeks, leaving
the baby in the care of her partner?

In the outpouring of gushing media comment, there was much
puffing of chests at the idea that New Zealand, the first country to give women
the vote, was again showing the world how things could and should be done.

Journalists promptly coined a term for this phenomenon:
Jacindamania. They seem to see no irony in the fact that they delight in using
the word even when they exhibit symptoms of the affliction themselves.

Some of the most cringe-inducing journalism was prompted by
Ardern’s attendance at Waitangi, where her hosts invited her to have the baby’s
placenta buried in line with Maori custom. Political reporters cooed their
approval.

Much was made too of the fact that she pitched in and helped
cooked the steak and sausages on the barbie. This simple but effective PR ploy
– the prime minister presenting herself as an ordinary, unpretentious Kiwi,
which she genuinely appears to be – was applauded as if it were a latter-day
miracle of the loaves and fishes.

But it’s hardly surprising that journalists are attracted to
Ardern. She’s of the same generation as most people working at the front line
of the media, and the same sex as a large proportion of them. It’s fair to say
that her political views probably mirror those of many, if not most, New
Zealand journalists.

Besides, journalism thrives on newness and novelty, and
Ardern represents what many journalists see as an exhilarating and overdue generational
change in the Beehive.

For nine years we were governed by middle-aged men in
suits.Ardern is still in her 30s. She’s
fresh, personable and seems effortlessly in control of things. To use a silly
popular expression, what’s not to like?

Her pregnancy is the icing on this cake, although it raises
questions that have been delicately sidestepped by the media. What if she
experiences complications, or struggles with the combined demands of motherhood
and the prime ministership? No one discusses these possibilities because they
conflict with the presumption that women can do anything.

Of course the prime minister can’t be blamed if the media
portray her as a cross between the Madonna and Wonder Woman. But it may make
the eventual reality-check more painful when the long media honeymoon ends, as
it eventually must, and the strains of office start to tell on her untested
government with its incongruous assortment of political bedfellows.

(First published in the Manawatu Standard and Nelson
Mail, February 21.)

I used Airbnb for the first time during the summer
holidays. It wasn’t an experience I’m in any hurry to repeat.

I had booked the house several months in advance. Our
son and his family were coming from overseas and we were looking forward to spending
some time with them.

The property wasn’t ideal, but accommodation in the
area we wanted was already getting tight and I was worried that if we waited
for something better to come up, we might miss out altogether.

The house boasted five-star reviews, but no photos of
the interior – in hindsight, a warning sign. Instead, the listing emphasised
the lovely view (true enough) and the appealing location.

Alarm bells started ringing when the owner told me,
after I had booked, that Airbnb had made a mistake with the listing by
understating the rental fee.

Call me naive, but I agreed to pay the extra amount
she requested. The advertised fee did seem modest compared with other houses we’d
seen listed, but it occurred to me that she might have deliberately pitched it
low to attract business in the hope she could then talk the renter into paying
more.

My suspicions about the owner’s modus operandi were
heightened when the time came to pay the extra money and she asked me to
transfer the amount to her bank account, rather than pay through the Airbnb
site. By doing this, she presumably avoided paying a share of the fee to
Airbnb.

She also asked me to label the payment in such a way
that it wouldn’t look like income. Why do that unless it was to avoid paying
tax?

I should have questioned this dodgy-looking
arrangement, but by this time we were in the house and I didn’t want to spoil
our holiday, which was brief anyway, by getting into a potentially unpleasant
dispute with the owner. In any case, I was philosophical about the sum of money
involved. It bought us precious whanau time.

Later, when the owner came up with a far-fetched
justification for claiming still more dosh, I politely but firmly declined.

Now, the property. The owner lived there herself and
had vacated it for our stay.

We arrived in the early evening – too late to make
alternative arrangements when we saw the state the house was in. It was a
matter of making the best of a bad job.

The fridge was filthy and half-full of the owner’s own
food, much of it looking well past its use-by date. The oven, one element of
which had burned out, was in a similarly disgusting state. The first hour of
our stay was spent getting the two appliances clean.

The dishwasher, which still had some of the owner’s
soiled dishes in it, was even more vile. Its interior was coated with a layer
of scum. We bought some dishwasher cleaning fluid the next day and ran a
two-hour cleaning cycle.

The cutlery drawer, too, was thick with grime. We
removed as much cutlery as we needed, thoroughly cleaned it and kept it
separate for the duration of our stay.

There were bins full of rubbish, the bed linen was
tired, and when my wife mopped the bathroom floor it turned out to not be the
colour we thought it was.

Half the light bulbs in the house didn’t function and
the two gas bottles for the barbecue were empty. (After I had confirmed with
the owner that there was a barbecue available, my wife asked me whether I’d established
that full gas bottles were supplied. “Of course they will be,” said I. “If
there’s a barbecue, there’ll be gas bottles.” Ha! More fool me.)

We couldn’t believe anyone could live in such
conditions, let alone have the nerve to charge others for the pleasure, but
perhaps it just doesn’t occur to some people that their houses are a mess.

I should also mention that there were the owner’s two
cats to be fed and a couple of sheep in a neighbouring paddock that needed to
be kept supplied with water. We were basically house-sitters, paying to look
after the place while the owner enjoyed a holiday. The grandkids did, however,
love the sheep – a rare sight where they come from.

The crowning indignity – which now seems almost
comical in retrospect – came early one morning when, padding down the darkened
hallway in bare feet, I stepped in something slimy and repulsive. Close
investigation revealed the disembowelled remains of a small furry animal,
obviously brought in by one of the cats, and next to it a pile of cat
excrement, which is what I trod in. You've gotta laugh, as they say.

I know from talking to friends who have used Airbnb
that our experience was atypical, but I’ll need some persuasion before I risk
it again. I pulled no punches in the review I wrote for the Airbnb site and
wasn’t surprised to note later that the property was no longer listed.

The remarkable thing is that we managed to have a good
time. Some readers will no doubt think we were mugs for putting up with the
conditions, but we’re a resilient lot, and our time together was too short to
ruin it by being miserable or waging war with the owner.

About Me

I am a freelance journalist and columnist living in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand. In the presence of Greenies I like to boast that I walk to work each day - I've paced it out and it's about 15 metres. I write about all sorts of stuff: politics, the media, music, wine, films, cycling and anything else that piques my interest - even sport, though I admit I don't have the intuitive understanding of sport that most New Zealand males absorb as if by osmosis. I'm a former musician (bass and guitar) with a lifelong love of music that led me to write my book 'A Road Tour of American Song Titles: From Mendocino to Memphis', published by Bateman NZ in July 2016. I've been in journalism for more than 40 years and like many journalists I know a little bit about a lot of things and probably not enough about anything. I have never won any journalism awards.